About the artist
I am a French-Filipino artist originally from Batanes, and I currently live in Divonne-les-Bains. Trained as a biologist specializing in tropical medicine, I began drawing in 1979 during missions to refugee camps in Southeast Asia, driven by the desire to share the stories of refugees across borders. My journey has led me to live and work in Asia, Africa, and Europe, and each place has inspired my art. I have further developed my drawing, painting, and collage skills through courses in Thailand, France, and Switzerland. My paintings are windows onto real and imagined journeys. I work primarily with oil paints and natural pigments that I prepare myself. I play extensively with vibrant colors and expressive compositions, layering papers (rice paper, banana fibers, gold leaf) with textiles and recycled materials. My work is rooted in a naive and folkloric style, inspired by my connection to my Filipino heritage. I have exhibited solo and in group shows in France, Switzerland,America , Africa and Asia and I am active locally in Divonne-les-Bains, notably at the ARPADI Art Biennial. Among my public projects is a tribute to my sister, the late Pacita Abad, an internationally renowned artist. This project, carried out in the Philippines with the Yaru Nu Artes Ivatan association, aims to keep my sister's memory alive and promote the Ivatan culture of my home province. I regularly contribute to projects at the Fundacion Pacita in Batanes. My recent series incorporate fabrics and patterns from Asia—I hope to both invite viewers to travel, remind them that art can preserve cultural diversity, and raise environmental awareness. Each of my canvases explores the connections between external and internal journeys, tracing the contours of emotions and memories. For me, "intimate cartographies" naturally corresponds to my work, where cultural identity, memory, and the environment intertwine.
Her paintings are characterized by a constant evolution of the styles and patterns used. It began with portraits of refugees from the hill tribes in Laos and was then strongly influenced by the warm colours of South Africa, its cultural richness and its exotic landscapes.
After exhibiting in many countries, she explored and experimented with different types of arts and techniques. This is how she integrated various Asian materials such as Asian textiles, banana fibres, gold leaf integrated into the painting with natural pigments
Victoria now uses recycled materials in her painting in hope of educating future generations about sustainability.
Interview with ELLE Suisse
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Victoria Abad Kerblat: Paintings like windows open on a personal journey.
How did you start painting?
I have always been drawn to the arts, but when I was young, being an artist was not considered a job in the Philippines. I became a biologist! I got a scholarship in a University at Boston to do my master's degree in biology, but when I went there, I stopped in Bangkok to see the exhibition of my sister Pacita and I never went to the States -United. It was 1979, there was the war in Vietnam, and finally, I went to work in the refugee camps. Biologists specialized in tropical diseases were needed. My husband also works in the humanitarian field, we lived and worked successively in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Laos, Thaïland, Malaysia, Mozambique, Pakistan, Vietnam. I started to paint without any formal training. It was my way of capturing the suffering of the refugees.
You design your painting as a testimony ...
Yes, in part. Refugees influenced me very much in my early days - I found their courage extraordinary in this environment of violence - but I also painted watercolours in old colonial houses when I was in Mozambique. I had campaigned so that they would preserve old historical building and houses. That said, it is true that some of my paintings carry a message or a question mark. I think, for example, of my painting 'Where do I belong?' When I was in Mozambique, I found myself in a universe where the skin color was a cursor on a ladder defining the degree of oppression. I wanted to convey the stress, the fear and the misunderstanding that one feels in such a situation.
Are there topics you do not like to paint?
Flowers, cats ... This kind of painting bores me! In fact, I am inspired by everything around me, people, my travels, exhibitions that I visit ... When I make a portrait, I like to know the person. In recent years, the Philippines has become one of my main sources of inspiration. In my painting, Ivatan, the subject is a woman from Batanes, the northernmost region of the country. In her hair, I painted Ivatan words and phrases. Her body signifies the different villages in Batanes.
In your latest works, you seem to be working more on textures ...
I stayed in oil painting, but I incorporate into my paintings materials that are now disappearing. I mainly use materials from the Philippines and Asia, such as rice paper, banana fibres, fabrics, natural pigments... I also try to draw the attention of young people to the beauty that we can get from recycled materials because this concept is not yet widespread in the Philippines.
Interviewed by Odile Habel